Discovery – Sunday Morning Kids Show

From October 1962 to September 1971, ABC aired a “highbrow series for children” called Discovery. Historical and cultural themes were emphasized in each program. In its first season it began as a 25-minute weekday series, but failed to attract much of an audience. In 1963 it switched to a Sunday morning timeslot where it remained for the duration of its run. Hosted by Virginia Gibson (later Bill Owen joined Gibson as a co-host), the show is fondly remembered by children of that era because it was, for years, the only network show that aired on Sunday mornings that was not an adult-oriented political or news panel show. Each year that Discovery aired it was followed by the last two digits of the year. He is the opening and closing of a Discovery ’68 episode.

Concert Scene 1976

Check out these bands playing in the Bay Area of California back in July 1976. An eye-opener is to look at the prices to see big-name entertainment. $8 a ticket was the highest ticket? I checked the same paper a decade later and the highest price was $16. The Consumer Price Index Inflation Calculator says $1 is now worth $4.66 in 1976 dollars, so an $8 ticket would be $37.28 in today’s money. $1 in 1986 has $2.37 buying power in 2020. So a $16 ticket is the same at $37.28. When did ticket sales get outrageous? BC (Before Corona) concert tickets would be going for hundreds of dollars if you could get them. What happened?

So, does anyone have memories of seeing these groups in concert?

Milk And Cereal

This is sort of a history of cereals we enjoyed as kids. Cereal actually started as a granola style concoction in the 1800’s that needed to be soaked in liquid to soften it up. Water made it soggy but the milk did the trick!

So which was your favorite as a kid? How about now as an adult? My all-time favorite is probably Lucky Charms. I also like Count Chocula from time to time. Cheerios, Frosted Flakes, Wheaties have stood the test of time unlike fad cereals like Mr. T and CP3Os . But what about Crispy Critters? Wow, think about that!

https://www.theretrosite.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Milkand-Cereal-1.mp4

Chevy Chase Talk Show

https://www.theretrosite.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Chevy-Chase-Talk-Show-2.0.mp4

In September 1993 still fresh off Johnny Carson’s retirement Fox Network wanted to get in the late-night talk show circuit. Dolly Parton was considered but her agent said no but recommended Chevy Chase who signs a $3 million contract. Chevy also secured the ownership right like Carson.

Fox was so confident in the show’s success they even went so far as to spend $1 million in renovating the old Aquarius Theater on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, then renaming it the Chevy Chase Theater.

Chase found it difficult to connect with his guests but was comfortable with his skits. The biggest issue was that he had trouble connecting with the audience which was apparent with many of the skits falling flat with them.

After five weeks or 29 shows, Fox pulled the plug. They promised sponsors 5-6 million viewers nightly but the average was fewer than 3 million. In the last week, it dropped below 2 million viewers.

Within 2 days of the show’s cancellation workers dismantled and painted over the Chevy Chase Theater sign. It is currently known as the Nickelodeon on Sunset and at the time of the writing, Google says it is permanently closed.

In an interview with A&E Biography interview “an entirely different concept than what was pushed on me. I would never do it again. What I wanted to have a whole different feel to it, much darker and more improv. But we never got there.”

President Wilson Burns Hand On Tank

To help promote a drive for Americans to buy war bonds the British tank Britannia was parked near the White House. This was before TV. Most news was on newsreels played at the movie theaters, a luxury for many. So not many people knew what a tank was. On April 19, 1918, President Woodrow Wilson was wounded in action while posing for photo opp. After inspecting inside the tank, the president exited the hatch of the tank and grabbed the hot exhaust, burning his hand. He smiled and exited to the east gate.

The president wore a bandage and then a white glove for many weeks. Wilson, an avid golfer did have to stop golfing for a couple of weeks, and then just with his left-hand weeks afterward. His wife Edith was quoted as saying “Woodrow is becoming the greatest one-armed champion of the world!

Flo: A Sitcom Spinoff Disaster

The popular CBS sitcom Alice, which ran from 1976 to 1985, was loosely based on the successful 1974 film Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. The plot had recently widowed Alice Hyatt (played by Linda Lavin) taking a waitress job in Mel’s Diner, a Phoenix eatery, to make ends meet. One of her waitress colleagues was feisty Florence (Flo) Castleberry played by Polly Holliday. The character became so popular that CBS launched a sitcom focusing on Flo. The premise of the spinoff was that Flo had moved back home to Cowtown, Texas to assume the management of a rundown roadhouse which she re-christened Flo’s Yellow Rose. As a mid-season replacement, Flo aired on Monday nights in March and April 1980 and got as high as number seven in the Neilsen ratings. However, when Flo returned in the fall of 1980 its time slot was moved several times. Ratings tanked and it was gone after a total of 29 episodes. The Flo character never returned to Alice (with the exception of old clips in the series finale). Here is the opening montage of Flo.

Julie Andrews on Dick Cavett Show

Here’s a gem: From a 1971 episode of The Dick Cavett Show, Julie Andrews is persuaded to sing Wouldn’t It Be Loverly? from My Fair Lady.

In 1963, Andrews began her work in the title role of Disney’s musical film Mary Poppins. She was hand picked by Walt Disney, who liked her performance as Queen Guinevere in the musical Camelot, she initially declined because she was pregnant, but Disney insisted saying “We’ll wait for you.”

Andrews next appeared in two of Hollywood’s most expensive flops: Star! (1968), a biopic of Gertrude Lawrence; and Darling Lili (1970), which is quite amusing as it is in this time that she appears in the clip above.

Unfortunately, in 1997 she developed a hoarseness in her voice, which resulted in surgery to reportedly remove non-cancerous nodules from her throat. In 1999, she filed a malpractice suit against the doctors who had operated on her throat. Originally, the doctors assured Andrews that she should regain her voice within six weeks, but Andrews’ stepdaughter Jennifer Edwards said “it’s been two years, and it [her singing voice] still hasn’t returned.” The lawsuit was settled in September 2000 for an undisclosed amount.

In recent years her career seems to have had quite a bit of a revival, taking on many modern roles in film series such as The Princess Diaries, Shrek, and Despicable Me.

Deep Blue v Kasparov

May 11, 1997 saw one of the most important milestones in human history occur. Strangely, it was attained at the expense of humans. On that date in New York City, Garry Kasparov, the reigning world chess champion and one of the greatest players of all time, lost the deciding game of a six-game series to an IBM computer nicknamed Deep Blue. Kasparov resigned after only 19 moves, giving Deep Blue the match with a record of two wins, one loss, and three draws. The previous year, Kasparov had beaten an inferior version of Deep Blue four games to two in a series played in Philadelphia. To those in the computer industry, the triumph of Deep Blue was a cause for celebration. To many chess followers and ordinary folks, however, the result was ominous: Artificial intelligence had surpassed one of the great minds in human history. Here is a six-minute video about the 1997 event.

After losing, Kasparov said that he sometimes saw deep intelligence and creativity in the machine’s moves, implying that during the second game, human chess players did some of the moves of the machine, which would be a violation of the rules. IBM denied cheating, saying the only human intervention occurred between games. The rules allowed the developers to modify the program between games, an opportunity they said they used to shore up weaknesses in the strategy of the computer which was revealed during the match. Kasparov requested printouts of the machine’s log files, however IBM refused. Later, IBM published the logs on the Internet.

Exit mobile version